


Voyage To A Beginning

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Drinking & Talking, Escape from Hell, Gen, Jealous Crowley (Good Omens), Lovecraftian Monster(s), Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Philosophy, Pre-Slash, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies, cthulhu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-22 19:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20879831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: More than twenty years after the Blitz, the angel and demon have drifted from conspiracy towards a steadier friendship. But Crowley’s been scarce, and Aziraphale finds himself drawn to the company of a philosophical wunderkind who’s sure he’s destined to save the human race from its own banality. Unfortunately, we know what road is paved with good intentions. And Crowley, standing right on the double-yellow, doesn't look at all thrilled.The lean man reached a hand down to Fell, nodded his head at Wilson. “Who’s this mook?”“Ah – a friend,” managed Fell, checking his clothes discreetly for damage. “Crowley, I could positively kiss you, I can’t imagine the paperwork if I tried to just blaze my way out with –  “The black, blank lenses turned on Wilson. “Well, you’ve got a knack for friends, mate – this one can’t stay out of trouble. Follow me.”





	Voyage To A Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> The Author in youth followed the work of Colin Wilson (1931-2013), who wrote volumes about the human experience of meaning and just about everything else, including didactic novels, a body of work on occultism, and essays on a magpie’s nest of subjects, among them music and the joys of alcohol. 
> 
> At the time of this story, in the middle 1960s, he would have been about thirty-five (the age at which Dante took a wrong turn and got a tour of Hell). The Author has taken the liberty of sending him back to London on a “writer’s break” from his home in Cornwall, working off an almost casual reference in _The Occult_ to a period of separation from his wife at some time before that work's 1971 publication. He couldn’t have failed to notice A. Z. Fell and Co.
> 
> CW for attitudes toward POC, gay people and women that are all too typical of the mid-20th century. Segments written from Wilson’s POV use language about these groups that resemble passages of his early work. For a philosopher, he went a long time before examining his own biases. Love you, Colin, but thpphftt. It's been fun to spoof you.

_Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita_   
_ mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,_   
_ ché la diritta via era smarrita._

_Midway upon the journey of our life_   
_ I found myself within a forest dark,_   
_ Where the straight way was lost._

The customer had been knocking around the shop for a little over half an hour – with intent, as the police phrase had it; Aziraphale was used to seeing people come in who had a very specific object but didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. Since the other browsers had given up and left, though, it was hard for his remaining patron to be inconspicuous. He finally seemed to realize it, and looked toward the bookseller’s desk to meet “Mr. Fell’s“ quiet, faintly amused gaze..

He was visibly past thirty but still wore the lively, observant expression that usually left humans after their second decade; his eyes crinkled behind a truly panoramic pair of spectacles, and his unconventional handsomeness came together out of a prominent nose, sensual lips and just-too-casually-ruffled-to-be-accidental hair falling over his brow. It wasn’t that cold out, but he wore a jumper with a high rolled neck. Aziraphale knew his appearance, which struck familiar chords in the angel’s mind, was a flimsy reason to like him, but found he couldn’t help it.

“I gather you have a speciality in occult books,” he said. “Is there anything in your stock that might have been the basis for the fictional _Necronomicon?_ I’m sure you’re acquainted with the – “

Aziraphale was already shaking his head.

“The short answer is no,” “Mr. Fell” said. “I get that question several times a year. The book you mention was entirely an invention of this American, this Mr. Lovecraft who produced such frightfully overwritten stories for the magazines. I do have numerous rare books of prophecy and revelation, however, and do feel free to browse them, though many are – ah– part of the collection, not for sale at any price.”

“That’s good,” said his new patron, smiling – it was a smile of boyish, infectious charm, and the angel suspected he knew it. “I’d have to sell a lot more books myself before I could afford some of these.” He extended a hand. “Colin Wilson. You might have run across my work – _The Outsider, Religion and the Rebel._ Maybe the fiction. _Ritual in the Dark,_ five or six years back._”_

“It sounds a bit forbidding.”

“It was a reworking of the Ripper murders.” Those had been bad enough the first time. Aziraphale was quite sure he didn’t want to read a fictional treatment. “Trying to make a point about human consciousness. People are made for _awareness_ but they bottle themselves into mundane existences, do what’s expected, don’t become who they could. I wrote it to illustrate a theory that killers are trying to break out of that box in an ultimately unsuccessful way…” Aziraphale became aware that he was looking at his patron with barely concealed alarm, and Wilson seemed to notice it at the same time. “Promise you, never tried it. Took a while to convince some people of that. My wife’s father, for one.”

“Dear me, that must have been awkward.”

“That begins to describe it.” A horsewhip had been involved.

“Well – feel free to browse. We close at four, but if something captures your interest, I don’t usually leave straight away. Accounts to do.”

It was a complete untruth, shocking as it is to impute such to a functionary of Heaven. But something about the man made Aziraphale feel indulgent. He was a questioner, a bit vain of his appearance, and clearly fancied himself the cleverest person in any room. It reminded the angel of someone else he knew.

* * *

Wilson found himself gravitating toward the bookshop every few days. He realized quickly that Fell would probably sooner walk through fire than actually sell one of his books – there must be some independent wealth somewhere, and there was nothing more British than a rich eccentric with a hobby-horse – but a respectful patron was free to read for hours on the prim furniture, and the sheer dusty smell of old volumes was comforting, like his days haunting the British Museum and sleeping outside in Russell Square, without the sleeping-outside part.

He usually dropped in an hour or so before closing, after writing into the night and sleeping after dawn if he slept at all, to set up one or another of the prophetic books or codices from the collection shelves on a reading table, taking neat notes from time to time. The angel found his quiet focus companionable.

“I suppose I should confess to you that I’m working on a Lovecraft-style novel of my own. It was something of a bet, to begin with, but it’s become part of my strategy.”

It was a bit of a surprise to hear the writer speak. Aziraphale realized he’d forgotten to put out the Closed sign, though it was a half hour after time, and rose to do it. “Strategy?” he said.

“Not everyone is going to read a book of ideas. Most people run as fast as they can the other way. But horror stories and detective mysteries and thrillers fly off the racks. And anything about the occult or the unexplained. It’s a sort of pornography.”

“Ah – I truly had never thought of it that way.”

Wilson looked up with his boyish grin. “People read about UFOs and rains of frogs to be titillated,” he said. “They _want_ everything to _stay_ unexplained. They like the itch, not the scratch. It’s not about actually understanding something. They find that dull. But it sells books.”

“I suppose you have a point,” said the angel. “There is – well, it’s a bit like you looking for that _Necronomicon _ that never existed. There’s a book in my field that’s rather the Holy Grail of prophecy, but no one wanted to read it when it was published because it was too, well, accurate.”

“How do you know that if you’ve never found it?”

“Reputation. _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch,_ contained thousands of cryptic predictions. It had one press run. By the time it was printed, a number of the prophecies had reportedly come to pass, exactly as written, once you allowed for the poetic language. No one was interested in a prophetic book that they weren’t free to interpret any way they wanted. So the publisher ended by pulping all the unsold copies.”

“All right, I’m remembering something about this,” said Wilson. “Blew herself up, didn’t she? Along with…”

“Yes, that was the one.”

“I’ll add it to my list of things to look for when I’m poking through collections. I can never have enough books.”

“Oh, my dear Colin – may I call you Colin? –, you’re not likely to look any place that I haven’t looked. It’s been a long search, and I’m hardly the only one.”

“Are you sure the book ever really existed?”

“As certain as I am sitting here,” said Aziraphale, “Or, well, standing,” because he had found himself craving a glass of the wine that had come in the day before and moved without thinking toward the recess where he kept his stocks. “Ahem… would you care to share a glass with me? After putting away that _Codex Borbonicus, _ anyway. It’s a later facsimile, but it wouldn’t be improved by wine stains.”

Wilson hesitated a moment, but the angel could already see his face light up. He could recognize a lover of good wine from a mile away. He reached down a decanter, and two glasses.

* * *

“I write about the experience of being an Outsider,” said Wilson with an audible capital O, feet crossed in front of him as he slipped a little deeper into one of the leather chairs they’d moved to after pouring the wine. It was rainy and raw out, and the bookseller had gotten an electric fire going. “Of seeing things in a way that others don’t, and possibly can’t.”

“I understand what you mean entirely, dear boy,” said Aziraphale. “I – well, I won’t bore you, but I’ve always seemed to be a bit out of place wherever I am. I suppose this shop is something of a refuge.”

“More than that. Everyday life is – drab, it drags us down into repetition and stupor, yet some people feel the intensity that’s actual aliveness. And when they try to explain it, to express it, other people think they’re mad, or need taking down a peg. Nobody wants to be told they’re wasting their time on earth, but most do.”

Wilson was fairly sure that the bookseller had simply been trying to tell him in a roundabout way that he was a pouf, but he’d made no overtures – he seemed simply to enjoy conversation, though sometimes his eyes strayed to the door as if he were expecting someone. Jealous boyfriend? A row between two angry queers wasn’t what Colin called a good end to an evening (or a good start for a friendship).

So he made a point of mentioning that his wife was away for several weeks, helping an old friend with a new baby, which was reasonably close to correct, and that that was why he’d come up from Cornwall and taken the rooms in Soho – a bit of nostalgia for his early days in London, when his ideas had been hammering themselves out. Now he’d foundered somehow, the critics' condescending little fish-knives had come out, and it stung; he had a yen to reconstruct the same urgency he’d felt then.

“I used to pass this place, you know? But at the time I never thought I could afford to walk in. Back after the War – I was sleeping in alleys and on the Heath. I’m more comfortable now, but sometimes being comfortable is dangerous…”

“What a quaint idea, my dear.” Mr. Fell raised his glass.

Wilson couldn’t help smiling, and toasted comfort, now surer than ever that his host was gayer than a decked-out Maypole.

But as time passed and they emptied the first bottle, the glances at the door stopped, and presently Fell halted a digression on music and Nijinsky by disappearing around a shelf and returning with an armful of phonograph records. The shop promptly began to vibrate with the tones of Poulenc’s _Litanies à la Vierge Noire._ “This is the sort of thing I meant,” said Fell, “and it’s completely amazing how he reproduced some of the sonorities of early liturgical harmony exactly as they sounded…"

“So far as we know.”

“Yes – yes, so far as we know.” The bookseller ticked up the volume and poured again. “I suppose – “

Wilson held up his hand for silence. If he liked good wine, he loved good music.

* * *

“Isn’t a temptation just another word for an excuse not to wake up? To go through that rut of stale feelings again, do what you did yesterday because it's safe...”

Wilson wasn’t sure how they’d gotten on to the subject of temptation, or to the third bottle, but speaking to a subject was what he did.

“And this is not temptation, my dear?” Fell poured again for both of them.

“This is the opening of the third eye,” pronounced Wilson gravely and a little drunkenly, lifting his glass and reverently breathing the nose before savoring a sip. “I have a theory that it was wine that first taught people there could be another way of seeing than the ordinary.”

“Then perhaps it’s the other way round, and what some call temptation is what others call an occasion to see things differently. I wrestle with these ideas myself, you see.”

Wilson felt ever more sure that he was going to have to fend off an advance at some point, though by this time he could convincingly plead incapacity. But when he began to doze off to the sounds of the Widor Organ Symphony, the bookseller’s hand on his arm was there only to shake him awake, with an offer of a cab to take him back to his rooms. He declined; the rain would wake him up.

* * *

It wasn’t like having Crowley around, but then, the demon seemed to have gone to ground, possibly embarking on one of his multi-year naps. There was a time when those had been commoner; there hadn’t been this long an interval since the Blitz, though, as if Crowley had adopted an ecliptic orbit around the bookshop, like a moon around a planet, turning up at regularly irregular intervals to shine a light in. This time it had been months. The young writer was certainly a wide-ranging conversationalist, even if he seemed to sometimes enjoy being merely shocking, and it was hard not to correct his speculations about people like John Dee (whom Aziraphale had instructed in Enochian). His complete lack of reverence, and inclination to question everything, were qualities that the angel missed when – well, when he didn’t have Crowley turning up to drink his wine and tell him stories and bait him to the brink of exasperation.

His new friend’s assumption that he was destined to topple the existing edifice of human philosophy, and remake it in an entirely new shape, was simply, on the other hand, rather adorable.

* * *

Wilson awoke with a surprisingly gentle hangover and a sense of mission. Part of it came from his new novel starting to take shape; there would be a history of humanity’s lost eras, the island of Mu, timeless intelligences to which mankind appeared as so many sheep. Part of it came from the challenge of solving a mystery. He was not a man to give in once he got the bit in his teeth.

* * *

The writer was there when the bookshop closed the night after next, and again a few nights after that, and nearly every night after that. The music soared into the domed skylight above the spiral staircase. Sometimes he brought a new phonograph record, and once or twice his own contribution to the wine menu. Aziraphale found himself wishing away the approaching date when his new friend would close his rooms in London, meet his wife, and go back to Cornwall and out of his life. He’d filled a hollow space in the angel’s existence, and by turns charmed and maddened him.

He’d passed through a range of emotions about the demon: pretended to himself that there was nothing to miss; buried (not very successfully) a feeling of alarm as the weeks wore on; chided himself for feeling peevish that Crowley would spend so long away now, after the Blitz, after _everything_, without getting in touch; and finally circled back to fear again. He felt foolish; they’d persisted in their Arrangement for centuries and gone decades without encountering each other. But that was before the angel knew the sort of risk that Crowley was prepared to take.

He scolded himself for never determining exactly where it was that Crowley kept himself on this earth, in this decade, in this London. He’d let himself be the planet, Crowley the moon, accepting his status as the fixed point. Now all he could do was ring the number, and listen to the burr at the other end of the line until he felt foolish.

He was vaguely ashamed to be enjoying wine and conversation, which Crowley loved, and music, about which he didn’t care so much, with a mortal of casual acquaintance. But the alternative was the darkness between the stacks in the long watches of the night, and they had never seemed longer.

* * *

Hampstead looked different when you weren’t hunting for a spot on the Heath to secrete your bedroll. Wilson wondered if any of the people crowded into the townhouse knew who he was; they would be the type to read at least some of his work, whether or not they understood it. He amused himself by counting how many were dressed flamboyantly, or to shock. A goateed man in a credible attempt at Regency attire; an inverted pentagram hung around one neck, around another a small animal skull inlaid with turquoise; some impressive facial hair, and what looked like an actual taxidermied lizard nestled in the woolly thatch of a disheveled Negro who reeked even at two yards of stale tobacco. The entertainment value of the browsers at the estate sale of an old occultist was almost as great as the promise of books – though Wilson had already accumulated enough new purchases during his weeks in London that he’d need to ship them back to Cornwall rail freight.

He already had all he could carry when he saw the title. The way the estate salesman read it off aloud as he wrote up the receipt told Wilson he had no idea what it was.

* * *

The Negro had been by turns importunate and surly, following him down all the way to the main road, offering sums of money he didn’t seem likely to command (though you never knew with these people) and when that failed, glimpses of “forbidden knowledge” that Wilson guessed would turn out to be stale reworkings of Blavatsky or the Golden Dawn. “I’m sorry,” he repeated for the fifth or sixth time, “it’s meant for a friend, and selling is out of the question.”

“Well, then, we’ll see ‘bout that, won’t we?” said the Negro, though he made no move except to spit copiously on the pavement and turn away, striking a light.

The lizard in his hair pivoted its head to gaze inscrutably back at Wilson, blinking.

Well. You didn’t see _that_ every day.

* * *

The angel was dialing Crowley’s number for the third time that day when the door chimed and Wilson entered, bearing a twine-handled carrier bag that clearly contained more than the wine bottle whose neck stuck out of it.

He’d arrived with various cargo over the past weeks. Manuscript pages of his new novel, which Aziraphale found a bit droning and didactic; annotated copies of earlier books – a thriller about a drug that made you think more clearly, a ghastly mystery about someone who scrawled up lines of Blake at murder scenes. He did seem devoted to the ploy of encasing his ideas in the most lurid narratives he could contrive.

This book was different: larger, wrapped in brown paper, tied in thin string, clearly a fresh purchase. The wine was an especially sleek long-cellared Cotes du Rhone.

“One of Crowley’s old hangers-on – are you all right?” For Mr. Fell had snapped around in his chair to turn toward him full face, eyes full of alarm.

“You know – oh, did you mean _Aleister?” _The bookseller made a visible effort to compose himself. “Sorry. I’m a bit jumpy today. _Dreadful _man.”

“ – popped his clogs last month,” Wilson said, flourishing the bottle briefly before setting it on the blotter. “I made sure to mark the estate sale on my calendar. And what do you think?”

“I can’t imagine, dear boy. Those people are frightful amateurs and so full of themselves. I can always spot one when they come into the shop.”

“Well, this one might have been enough of an amateur that he didn’t know what he had.”

Aziraphale was really alarmed at the thought of opening the package. He could only think of the chapters he’d read out of politeness, so unlike the cultured conversation of his new friend, and wonder what gruesome tidbit the man had turfed up.

Wilson forged on, picked up a paper knife and broke the string. The brown paper layers crumpled aside to reveal a beaten, buckram volume that was itself tied with a faded ribbon: _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch: Being a Visionary Guide to the Future of Mankind, Penned By the Last True Witch In England._

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Aziraphale. “I hope you didn’t pay very much for this.”

“Nothing I couldn’t afford. I got an advance from my publisher. I told them some rare-book purchases were essential to my research.”

“Well, that may be what you have to use it for,” sighed the angel. “This is a later edition of a forgery released sometime after the Great Plague, when the market for prophecy was understandably fertile. Probably a pressman who had seen the original put down bits as he remembered them, then let imagination take over. I spotted it as a fake immediately – “

“So you’ve seen it.”

“Ah – yes, at other… sales. It predicts, among other things, the relocation of the British monarch to the New World, commerce with the Moon within the century, and the cure of all disease through the judicious application of saltpeter. It seems the forger had investments.” He’d meant well. It was just the thing to expect from someone who thought himself too clever right out of the box, but it was kindly done. “You must tell me a bit more about the collection it came from. We can have a look at it -- perhaps over dinner? You close your rooms tomorrow, if I remember?”

“I’m meeting Joy ‘s train around two.”

“Let me splash out, as they say. No, no, my boy, my treat, in gratitude for your company. Just let me try this call one more time.”

Wilson set the bottle on Fell’s desk for later. He still puzzled at his own fondness for the bookseller’s company. He usually was put off by obvious inverts, with their affectations and airs, but something about the man radiated a quiet joy, for all his fuss and primness. He embodied what Wilson meant when he wrote about _essence_ and _concentration_. He knew what he was, down to the last infinitesimal strand of DNA. Even as he cradled the unhelpful receiver in obvious disquiet, he was enviable.

* * *

“I didn’t expect the Ritz. Hardly dressed for it.”

“My dear, you’re a noted writer, or so you tell me. They make allowances for that. And if they don’t, they’ll make allowances for _me._ Shall we bypass the wine list and just order whatever is recommended with the oysters? I find I can rely on the staff here.”

The oysters were astonishing and the wine breathed transcendence into them. The sensual perfection blended strangely with a sweet, sad feeling of endings.

“I suppose I ought to confess,” said Wilson, “Joy and I took time apart because we were… well, going through a bad patch. Women sometimes don’t make sense to me. It seems as if our intelligences come from two different places, as much as we’re drawn to one another – that they need direction and at the same time don’t want it – well, it’s hard to explain.” The waiter arrived with the fish course and salade nicoise then, scattering the conversation momentarily. “We’ve been apart long enough now for me to know I want to fix it, but – I don’t know, perhaps you understand more about them than I do.” It was the only allusion he’d made to the kind of Outsider he assumed Fell was, and he regretted it momentarily when he felt two fingers rest lightly on the back of his hand.

“Colin, dear. Women make exactly as much sense as we do. Men, women, angels, ducks… we’re all conscious bits of Her creation, aren’t we? We’re all trying to – what’s the word you like – _actualize._” The fingers lifted away; Wilson exhaled. “She knows what you’re worth. Didn’t you tell me she stood by you when her own people thought you were something abhorrent? That counts. Just be patient with one another. Don’t try to imagine what the other person thinks or feels. You have only to ask, you know.”

There was an odd, faintly electric feeling coming from the spot on the back of the hand that Fell had touched, as if some sort of energy had been imparted to him. It would be all right with Joy. The book would be all right. His work would be all right.

He barely remembered the rest of their conversation. He thought of Huxley: everything was coming in at the doors of his perception as if they’d been cleansed, as if all reality had somehow become more vivid and near. He remembered their final brandy toast as a coincidence of lights.

* * *

“Think nothing of it,” said Fell when the writer thanked him for the dinner again on their walk back to Soho. “You’ve been a friend through something of a – well, a lonely patch for me, too. I’ll miss our evenings. Do send me a copy of the new book.”

“I’ll make sure you get a copy of everything I publish in future. Speaking of – did you want this? Or – “

“Oh, the Nutter forgery! No, let it be part of your collection – “

Before he could finish speaking, while Wilson extended the brown-paper carrier, a form flew out of the shadows and knocked the writer half off his feet. Staggering against Fell, he lost his grip on the carrier’s handles, whiffed a stifling hogo of stale smoke as he grasped at a filthy coat. The man from the estate sale. He wasn’t going to let go, and paced the Negro’s running gait as he fled down the pavement.

“Colin!” called Fell. “Don’t – “

The two went down in a tussling mass. It was, sure enough, an honest-to-god lizard on the man’s head – he hadn’t imagined it. Or perhaps the doors of perception had opened a little too far. Fell was behind him, pulling at his sleeve, saying “just let go, you don’t want to – “ An odd glow was gathering in the air. Then, with a loud snap, he wasn’t on a London pavement but tumbling down a sharp incline in a landscape of toppled slabs, angles and planes shifting away everywhere. The lizard-man twisted the book from his stunned hand, disappeared behind a corner of masonry.

He looked around. Fell was behind him, shedding a faint light, like a firefly.

He had gone sleepless too many nights, he decided. He was dreaming awake. It was the only explanation.

* * *

There was no sky, no ground, only the flat planes and edges of what ought to have been – a building? A plaza? A motorway interchange? – but consistently refused to be anything of the sort. Geometry seemed to have gone insane, blossoming out into three surfaces where there should have been a place for only one, or making an ascent out of a step downward. Fell stumbled over what should have been a gentle decline in the surface beneath them, righted himself, moved to ascend what might have been steps only to plummet five feet with a startled squeak. Wilson couldn’t backpedal, and followed him. They turned to look up a dim shaft that ought to have been a level rise. Fell scrambled to his feet, dusting himself, and snapped around at a sound of footsteps. Wilson looked behind him, but now the footfalls seemed to be coming from in front. He took a tentative step, sprawled on his face, and rolled to find Fell offering him a hand up, nodding: _this way._ They gripped an angle of masonry, tried to swing themselves around it, and went flailing again, while the steps drew closer, and then there was a voice:

“Angel, could you stay put for _one fucking moment?_ I’m trying to sort you out here.”

Fell’s grip on Wilson’s hand tightened. He couldn’t tell if the bookseller’s expression was one of anger or relief.

* * *

“I’m taking it you hitched along with Ligur? Just dodged him.”

The newcomer was whipcord-lean, dressed in black, with vivid red hair curling over his shoulders and dark glasses like a Beat poet. If this was a waking dream, it was at least interestingly populated.

“The Negro fellow with the – reptile on his head?” Wilson was feeling for damage.

“That’d be him. Been trying to keep an eye on him.” The lean man reached a hand down to Fell, nodded his head at Wilson. “Who’s this mook?”

“Ah – a friend,” managed Fell, checking his clothes discreetly for damage. “Crowley, I could positively _kiss _you, I can’t imagine the paperwork if I tried to just blaze my way out with – “

The black, blank lenses turned on Wilson. “Well, _you’ve_ got a knack for friends, mate – this one can’t stay out of trouble. Follow me.”

And somehow, when the lean man – Crowley – trod on the maddening planes and angles of this five-dimensional funhouse, nothing disturbing happened.

This was definitely an hallucination. His brain was stretched to the limit and after the last few days, he was imagining Aleister Crowley as a beatnik in the middle of a Lovecraft story. No problem.

“It’s sort of a neutral zone leading to Below. Doesn’t slow us down much. Ligur used that way in because it’s easy, but you must have been touching him. Boom. Don’t do stupid things like that, Angel.”

“Colin had hold of him. I didn’t have time – “

“Oh, it’s _Colin, _is it.”

The redhead jabbed a hand randomly in Wilson’s direction.

“Pleased to meet you, Colin,” he said, sounding no such thing. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

* * *

Crowley led them through a forest of angles that looked acute but acted as if they were oblique, planes that canted downward but led upward.

“I’ve been trailing him because they’ve been on a tear to find the book by that nutter, the one the Nazis wanted so badly – “

“Not _a_ nutter, dear. Agnes Nutter.”

“Well, that’s A. Nutter, isn’t it?”

“Never mind…”

“Anyway, for someone who barely knows what a book is, he went all in. I was doing everything to avoid him connecting me with your shop. Natural place to look.”

“None of your lot are much on scholarship, are they?”

“Who do you think invented college textbooks? This way – walk slowly.”

“Someone’s behind us,” said Wilson.

“Don’t mind him.”

But the shadow looming around a sharp corner of masonry was huge and hard not to mind. As the writer stared, ping-ponging between dry-mouthed fear and detached observation of what he considered his own delirium, a massive figure, all crab-claws and flailing tentacles, mooched around a wall or entryway to blot out half his field of vision and…

…run scuttling across the stone planes of the floor, squeaking. Crowley dropped to one knee.

“What’re _you _doing awake, eh? Stars aren’t right, you know that.”

He reached to scratch somewhere under the eruption of tentacles it had instead of a lower face, which was now only a foot from the floor. Crablike claws clacked together as it ran in circles like an eager puppy, squeaking “_Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!”_

“He never really leaves this part of Below,” said Crowley. “The geometry makes him look bigger from a distance. He likes that – he’s good at giving people nightmares but not much else. Yeah, yeah, _fhtagn_ back to sleep. Maybe I’ll be by later with some cocoa.”

“What ever is he saying? It sounds rude.”

“You should hear him when we send him to bed without his dinner. G’wan, g’wan, beddy-bye for you. Bloody hell, when did I sign on as a nanny?” Crowley half rose, chivvying the small squid-faced being back into a crevice of the stone.

“Didn’t need the distraction. Get my bearings. This way – better join hands – “ Crowley led, the angel reaching back to link hands with the very confused mortal who for once had absolutely no words to characterize his experience. They inched along, the demon now visibly feeling out the way with his feet, going a bit more confidently as he proceeded, and then – a modest step down turned into a long plane like a ski slalom. Wilson came to rest on his back with the wind knocked out of him, Aziraphale found himself landing on top of Crowley in the attitude of a lover bearing down passionately into a kiss, except that his lips bounced off Crowley’s forehead, splitting against his teeth on the inside with a sharp pain and a flood of metallic taste..

‘Not here, darling,” said Crowley, grinning wickedly as he grabbed the angel’s face, planted an indifferently aimed wet smooch, and flicked out a forked tongue. Crowley had always been able to do really weird things with his tongue, and one of them appeared to be healing what amounted to demonic wounds in angelic flesh. “There. Fixed.”

The angel huffed and turned vivid red. “_Crowley!_ Really – “ The demon’s grin at his discomfiture was nothing short of obscene. “You started it. Sorry if I read something into it, all right?” Crowley’s eyebrow quirked up. “Come on, take a joke. I know where we are now.”

Wilson’s studiedly casual hair was now a propwash disaster and there was a rip in the sleeve of his jumper, but his eyes were shining. “This is _intensity,_” he said. “I may be dreaming it but this is the experience of _absolute focus – “_

“What’s he on about?”

“He’s a philosopher, dear.”

They were going with backs pressed against a wall now, sidling along a narrow ledge that looked as it it were only a few inches above the neighboring floor but clearly couldn’t be trusted. A cold wind surged past them, in a way that suggested an outlet not far ahead, and a distant cry that sounded like _Tekeli-li!!!_ repeated choppily between the gusts. A noise rose, became quickly unbearable, and suddenly an authentic Tube train, bound for Elephant and Castle, roared by in the narrow tunnel.

“Bit of the Bakerloo line detours through here,” said Crowley. “We’ve been trying to fix it. All right, just up ahead. Everyone together, take a run at that slab, straight at it, and – jump!!!”

Wilson, clinging to Aziraphale’s right hand, leapt like Icarus, head back, eyes closed in an expression of ecstasy. It put him in just the position to bean himself soundly against the irregular pediment as they landed on the paving stones surrounding the famous Kensington Gardens statue of Peter Pan.

“Let’s get him away from this,” said Crowley, who had rolled a little less violently across the pavement to the manicured lawn. “Neverland’s just _that_ way – don’t want to do this all over again.”

Between them they got the semiconscious writer to a bench, where his head lolled back, face blissful, looking about fifteen.

”Sorry about the radio silence,” said Crowley. “All of a sudden Bubs and the Dukes decided that book was, well, the unholy Grail. Don’t know why. Thought they'd have moved on by now, attention span, not great. Didn’t want them coming anywhere near you or catching us communicating. So you just _have _to blunder right into the foyer, don’t you?”

He sounded actually angry, and Aziraphale looked up a bit apprehensively from the work of checking Wilson for injuries, healing bruises and scrapes as he went along.

“Angel, just try to stay out of trouble when I’m not around to _keep_ you out of it. I can’t stand the thought of you down there, d'ye know what they’d do? Don’t take any more chances like that.”

“I couldn’t let anything happen to him. He meant well.”

“Oh, of course he did.”

“His wife would have been devastated.”

“Wife. Ah.”

“He’s supposed to meet her tomorrow. We need to get him back to his rooms. I think I have the address here.”

“Flip for the miracle?”

“I’ll do it. Heaven won’t notice an act of mercy toward a poor fellow taken by a bad turn in Kensington Gardens. I’m sure it happens all the time.”

“If they have to look at that statue, bet on it.”

* * *

“They’ve got the book now, and they won’t figure out it’s a fake for a while, I’m guessing,” said the angel. “People _liked_ their books of prophecy to contain – well, hogwash. Whatever they’re looking for, they’ll expect it to be buried in a – "

“Load of bollocks,” Crowley supplied helpfully.

They were in the bookshop, in the squashy leather chairs, glasses of Wilson’s farewell gift in hand. He’d dozed through the miraculous transfer to his nearby rooms, and Aziraphale was reasonably sure he’d remember everything in the morning only as the aftermath of a sleep-deprived, boozy dinner at the Ritz.

“Good taste in wine,” Crowley added as he breathed in the peppery, herbal nose. He’d discarded the dark glasses for the moment and the lamplight was reflected in his topaz eyes. It was good to see him back in the shop, violating geometry with his posture on the chair almost as much as the anteroom to Below had done.

Wilson had meant them to drink the wine together, Aziraphale knew, but ending the evening as he had seemed the only safe way to avoid awkward questions. He’d send a bottle at least as good down to Cornwall, for him to share with Joy.

He owed a gift to Crowley too. In fact, it was long overdue – about a hundred years overdue, really, plus some loose change. If the demon was going to keep rescuing him like this, he did need some insurance. He'd have to nerve himself to it by degrees, still, but perhaps buying a Thermos flask was the place to start. He made a mental note.

“Penny for ’em, angel.”

Aziraphale realized he was lost in a muse, two fingers to his lip where it had briefly split, with his own words replaying in his head: ..._she stood by you when her own people thought you were something abhorrent... Don’t try to imagine what the other person thinks or feels. You have only to ask…_

He found he couldn’t. “Only grateful to you, my dear. That was a bit of a predicament... And then there you were, like the poet Virgil, leading us out of the abyss.”

“I obviously can’t turn my back on you.”

“Please, never do,” said the angel fondly.

That was as fast as he could go, for now.

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> When I joined this site a few months ago it was with the object of, first, completing and uploading an old unfinished fic that had H. P. Lovecraft as an actual character. Evidently I'm getting closer.
> 
> _Voyage To A Beginning_ (1969) is the title of Colin Wilson's early memoir. Wilson’s first “Lovecraftian” novel, _The Mind Parasites_, appeared in 1967. It was followed not long after by _The Philosopher’s Stone_, which also used Lovecraftian motifs, and _The Occult: A History._ His actual bibliography runs to pages of titles alone; he was willing to write about anything and everything, though the paranormal remained a fascination for him all his days.
> 
> None of his works on the subject, for what it’s worth, reference Agnes Nutter.
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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